Peppers

Here's an article I must re-read regularly. And start the peppers early!

I chose some heirloom peppers that I hoped would give me pimento-type results. But they are not red. I was late (very late) getting them in the ground. And now I read that they don't like the really hot days of summer here. Who knew. I thought being warm weather plants meant loving heat -- oh well. Why the prairie looks like it does, anyway.

Thoughts on Tomatoes

This is the German Pink, an heirloom. I like it a lot and had a wonderful crop this year. They are big, definitely pink, oddly-shaped, meaty and flavorful.

Below is something called simply Italian Heirlooom. It is also meaty, fairly large, and flavorful. No reason to not like it; it just doesn't stand out. Perhaps I'll try another old one in combination with the Pink next season. I am buying an heirloom roma to try, and I'll plant more rows of those for canning. My final batch of salsa was much improved by letting liquids drain out of it for some hours -- which seems a horrible waste, but makes better salsa.


Shall I tell you what went wrong last year? Record-keeping, remember... I plant snow peas in my tomato rows in the very early spring. They grow up on the outsides of the rows, bear, and die back in time for the tomatoes in the middle of the row to rise up and begin their season. Except that last year the peas were 4-5 feet tall and deprived the tomato plants of light for their whole season. When I pulled them all down, the tomatoes were quite puny. They lived, but bore very little fruit.

In order to demonstrate my ability to learn from the past, this season I bought a low-growing pea and used that only. It reached two feet and the tomatoes prospered.

NOW the question is, since I have a lot more room, should I forget this doubling-up completely, give the peas their own space, and not endanger the tomatoes at all. Hmmm. I really liked it. It felt like I was really get the most out of my space. I was PROUD of how it worked (except, of course, when it didn't).

Okay, I see it. No good reason to continue the practice. In fact, I won't have to worry about the height of the pea plants. And I could stick some Sweet Peas in amongst them -- how's that for a perk? Did the peas provide nitrogen for the tomatoes? Maybe. I'll see if next year's crop is as good as this.

It's Not Snowing HERE

No, it's nice and warm here still, but there's snow on the ground (just a little) in Golden and Colorado Springs.

There's Anna enduring the major garden hazard, Amanda the Climber. For some reason she targets anyone in the garden, jumping up your front if you do not bend over and pick her up first. And if you're picking beans or something else, well, she just jumps right ON.



Here are the pickles from the weekend -- relish and peppers. After tonight (my last class) I hope to do more peppers, some salsa, and more tomatoes. We'll see. Plus I MUST get the garlic planted.

After the Weekend

We worked hard yesterday and got 9 pints of pickle relish made, 8 pints of hot peppers pickled, 10 more quarts of tomato sauce finished, and tonight it might rain.

I picked several gallons of peppers, so I'll pickle them until I run out of jars, I guess -- which is in the not-too-distant future. I'm left wondering about the mechanism of turning colors in peppers -- I have these nice yellows (above) that turn red -- but only a few of them. Once they're picked, they do start turning more enthusiastically, but then they're drying (shriveling) and losing freshness. But maybe that's not a problem when pickling them. Must do some research.

The apple-dryers made big progress by borrowing a much bigger dryer. They got 2+ gallon bags of apple slices bagged, and I've hidden them, so perhaps they'll last.

Plugging Along

Let's see.

Nine pints of salsa. It's a recipe that calls for only Romas, but it still ends up much "runnier" than the store's. Of course. Maybe (if I care) next year I'll hang everything up in a pillow case before canning. What would I do with that spicy juice?

About six quarts of frozen green beans.

Two batches of dried apple rings (mostly all already eaten by the processors -- ah, well, eating is the goal, right?).

More raspberries.

More tomatoes. Anna served the first batch of homemade sauce with spaghetti Tuesday while I was at work. We are now tweaking the recipe (she forgot herbs, mainly), but it is NOT overly acidic, my main concern. Of course, the carpers will carp, but it was yummy.

Four apple pie fillers.

AND we got the stock moved onto some not-overgrazed pasture that they are happy in. Give the goats two days before finding ways out...

Little Helpers

Can you see him there? He's as long as my hand is wide and hard to spot. But he's been working the raspberry bed for at least a week, and I hope catching many a grasshopper.

The other predators whose help I treasure are concentrated up in the tomatoes, where they enjoy the help of hog fencing for structural foundations: the spider cohort. Those ladies are always ready when we come picking. We send hoppers jumping, which in turn sets the ladies to spinning. It's great fun for the bloodthirsty gardener to watch a hopper fully wrapped and ready to eat in less than a minute.

Harvest

This will be the first batch to make it into the freezer. All other berries have gone straight from hand to mouth. We'll see if the ice cube tray idea works. Nice colors, though.
I picked about 2 gal. of beans this morning. Although there are many grasshoppers around them, the damage is not bad. Busy spiders are keeping the hoppers down, I hope. And a lovely huge mantis down in the raspberries (picture later).

The Lazy Housewife beans. These are being left to dry for seed. I'm still thinking about how to grow them out on the rows so they hang down over the walkway. Lovely long, straight beans.

The Herb Garden

Here again you see the herb garden as it was in June.

And here we are in September. The basil at the back is ready for a second cutting, and I haven't decided whether to cut and dry a lot of the thyme, or just hope to use it all winter where it is. That has worked for me in the past until about late Jan. or Feb. So, logic tells me I ought to dry some, regardless, right? And the sage in the front.

Roma tomatoes

Here is the roma bed in the middle of June. To the left are sunflowers with plenty of weeds, and to the right is a bed of peppers with marigolds alternating. A gardener friend gave me the romas, so next year I will have to do it myself. She seeds them into a cold frame out in her garden; I seeded all my other tomatoes into the ground under the elegant milk-jug cloche.


Here is the home of the romas now, facing the other direction. The basil is pretty well out-grown and invisible. The basil plants were a gift, but I later had to transplant my own seedlings in after some unidentified predator chopped each seedling off in mid-stem. These tomatoes have been allowed to sprawl.

I'm still thinking about how to control them next year. D.T. votes for a single row with something low for them to sprawl over and keep them off the ground. We are walking on them, presently, as they've grown into the walkway. Makes sense, right?

Today D.T. brought in about 2 gal. of romas, but since the kitchen faucet needed work, none of them got processed. Applesauce was finished instead -- 7 qt.

Pictures

I hope for some before/after pictures here. Above is June in the new herb garden bed. Sage to the front, thyme along the left edge. Under the milk jugs (cloches) are I believe seeded rosemary. Didn't take. At the far back, chamomile , mint, and summer savory to the right.

And so we begin.

In lieu of a memory, and any decent record-keeping, this has GOT to be the most practical, useful, and (dare I hope) powerful way to keep track of what happens out in my garden from year to year. Surely I (we) can do better here than my beat-up pieces of graph paper with fuzzy notations in faded pencil.

So, what's in the garden today? No. 3 Son picked two ice cream buckets of snap beans, both green and yellow, from the bush beans plants I planted in midsummer.

D.T. picked 4 gal. of roma tomatoes and I picked 5 gal. of misc. heirlooms.














The Lazy Housewife pole beans (see above in June), with which I have a special affinity, are still producing, but most of them are going to the chickens because we find them too late. Next year, different location. Their current look is in the picture at the top (which I can't get to move!), showing that morning glories were allowed to overshadow these beans. Actually, the picture doesn't show you just how lovely the flowers got, because I've been pulling them down and feeding them to the chickens.


A cup or so of raspberries came out of the garden today, as well as more watermelons. No. 4 Son has harvested many many watermelons and canteloupes this season. We're still eating them.

Last weekend I pulled the last of the beets and made 4 qts. of beet/cabbage/horseradish relish. The beets I planted in midsummer never came up.

Today I canned 9 qts. of tomato sauce from the 10 gal. of fruit that came in last weekend. Tonight the pot is started cooking down the 9 gal. from today. P.S. Those 9 gal. cooked down to 12 quarts of sauce because of the high number of romas. More romas next year.